The Grading School · The grade names
One cut decidesevery grade name.
Super Negin, Negin, Sargol, Pushal. Four words plus bunch for one question: how much of the pale yellow base of the thread is still in the jar.
Chapter 01 · The whole argument
What actually separates the grades?
Where the knife goes. A saffron stigma is deep red at the tip and fades to a pale yellow stalk at the base, called the style. The red part carries the colour, the taste and the aroma. The style adds weight and very little else.
Every grade name in the trade is a description of that ratio. Cut high, above the style, and you have the strongest saffron per gram. Leave the style on, and you have sold the buyer a part of the flower that will not colour their rice. That is the entire system, and the chemistry follows from it rather than the other way round.
Chapter 02 · Side by side
Super Negin, Negin, Sargol and Pushal compared
Two things worth knowing about these words. They are trade names, not legal definitions: no authority licenses who may print "Super Negin" on a label. And they describe the cut, not the origin. A grade name tells you how the thread was trimmed, never where the flower grew.
Chapter 03 · The decision
Which grade should you actually buy?
Buy whole red stigma if you want the most out of each gram, and buy Sargol if you are cooking in volume and do not care how the threads look in the jar. Both are real saffron. The mistake is paying a whole-stigma price for a broken-thread grade, which is one of the trade's common quieter substitutions.
- Rice, biryani, a dish you are proud of
- Super Negin or Negin. The threads are part of the presentation
- Everyday cooking, large quantities
- Sargol, bought knowingly and priced accordingly
- A gift
- Whole stigma in clear glass, in its box. A gift the recipient cannot inspect is a gift they cannot trust
- Baking, drinks, anything milled
- Powder from a house that graded the threads before milling
- Never worth it
- Pushal or bunch sold at a whole-stigma price
Chapter 04 · How the names get used
Why "Super Negin" on a label proves nothing
No international standard defines these terms, ISO 3632 does not use them, and no penalty for printing them on the wrong jar. A grade name is a claim, and like any claim it is worth exactly as much as the evidence behind it.
Which is why the useful question is never "what does the label say". It is "what can I see, and what can you show me".
The whole stigma is long and unbroken, with a frayed trumpet at one end. A jar of short, uniform fragments is not Super Negin whatever the lid says.
Free, instantPale ends in a jar sold as all-red saffron settle the question on their own. Hold the jar to the light before you buy, which is the argument for clear glass.
The giveawayA laboratory measures colouring, taste and aroma strength under ISO 3632 and puts a number on each. A house that has one will show you; the reaction to the question is itself informative.
The real testChapter 05 · The house position
What we bottle, and why only one grade
We sell Super Negin and nothing below it. Not because the other grades are bad, since Negin is excellent and Sargol is honest value, but because a house that sells four grades has to be trusted on which jar is which, and we would rather remove that question
The threads go into clear glass for the same reason. The grade is a visible fact or it is a sentence on a label, and only one of those survives being looked at.
Now you know what to ask for